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Every once in a while you come across an idea that is so simple - and yet so ingenious -that you wonder why nobody thought of it sooner. That is the feeling I get when I look at a new application for the BlackBerry called Naggie. The software works with RIM's 7520 wireless handheld and makes excellent use of the GPS (global positioning system) chip that's included in the hardware. Naggie can store your reminders and to-do lists, but adds an important variable that your paper based to-do list can't touch: location.

This union of reminders with location makes perfect sense. For example, if you need to remember to bring home some milk from the grocery store, you don't need to be reminded at the gas station when you're filling up—ideally, you'd be reminded as you close in on the grocery store itself. That's the idea behind Naggie. It monitors your location by sampling the GPS chip in your BlackBerry 7520 and when you approach a location that you've defined a reminder for, it will notify you.

You can install Naggie over the air from www.naggie.com. It is a free download at the moment, but the site suggests that might not be the case for much longer. Once installed, Naggie runs quietly in the background, monitoring the GPS to determine your coordinates.

It's easy to define locations inside Naggie. If your current location is at a place you'd like to use for a reminder, simply click the trackwheel and select Save Current Location. You can enter a descriptive name for the location so that you can identify it when you add a reminder.

Naggie uses the current coordinates to define the location. But what if you don't happen to be at the location that you'd like to use in a reminder? Do you have to know the coordinates?

Although you can enter the exact coordinates to define a location, thankfully you aren't required to. You can enter a street address and Naggie performs a lookup to determine the actual GPS coordinates. Note the following image where I defined my local Lowe's Home Improvement store as a location (I'm always making trips there only to return home having forgotten to get something on my list).

Once you've defined a location, you can then enter a reminder. Choose from the locations you've entered into Naggie. There are a few nice options when setting a reminder. You can specify whether you want the reminder to fire as you're arriving or departing from a location.

You can also specify a certain date and time after which you'd like the reminder to trigger. For example, let's say you're at one of the locations you've defined and you'd like to enter a reminder for the next time you come to that location. Since you're already there, you don't want the reminder to trigger right then—it needs to trigger the next time you arrive. Use the trigger after date to control this.

One of the nicest features of Naggie is its excellent integration with BlackBerry Profiles. The type of alert you receive can be set up just as you'd configure an incoming email message or phone call. Go to the profiles program and notice that Naggie has installed an extra option there, so you're already intimately familiar with the notification options.

Because Naggie quietly runs in the background, you can use your device as you normally would—check e-mail, use the phone, etc. and your reminders will still trigger as you've defined them in your profiles.

My hats is off to this brilliantly simple and useful application.

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About the Author
Dave Mabe, the author of the O'Reilly book BlackBerry Hacks, is a largely self-taught engineer and writer who strives to create a simple, elegant solution to a complex problem. He has worked in the communications industry for eight years and has worked with BlackBerry devices for almost five.